Macronix International Co., Ltd.

Chen-Chia Fan

Chin-Hung Chang

Chun-Hsiung Hung

Kuen-Long Chang

Ken-Hui Chen

Su-Chueh Lo

Shih-Chang Huang

Chia-Feng Cheng

A system and method use a physical unclonable function in a PUF circuit on an integrated circuit to generate a security key, and stabilize the security key by storage in a set of nonvolatile memory cells. The stabilized security key is moved from the set of nonvolatile memory cells to a cache memory, and utilized as stored in the cache memory in a security protocol. Also, data transfer from the PUF circuit to the set of nonvolatile memory cells can be disabled after using the PUF circuit to produce the security key, at a safe time, such as after the security key has been moved from the set of nonvolatile memory cells to the cache memory.

Stable physically unclonable function

A soft program method is provided for recovering memory cells of a memory array. In an embodiment, the method includes the following steps. Memory blocks of the memory array are soft programmed with first bias voltage. A selected memory unit within a selected memory block is then soft programmed with second bias voltage. Next, whether a judging criterion is met is determined. If not, the method is repeated from the step of soft programming with the second bias voltage; if so, whether the selected unit is a last memory unit is determined. If the selected unit is not the last memory unit, other memory unit is assigned as the selected memory unit and the method is repeated from the step of soft programming with the second bias voltage. When the selected unit is the last memory unit, the memory array is bit-by-bit soft programmed with a third bias voltage.

Soft program method and computer readable medium thereof

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Hsinchu, Taiwan

Chen-Chia Fan